Name/Title
Letter from Alfred L. Kroeber to Harry GeorgeEntry/Object ID
Q1430.634.308DDescription
A two-page letter from Alfred L. Kroeber to Harry George discussing linguistic groups in California and the basketry associated with various tribes. Vol I pg. 308D
Dear Sir:
Your letter of the 13th instant ?? the University of California, has been referred to me. In regard to the Quoratean family, there are several hundred indians of this group still living and making a good many baskets. These cannot be distinguished in appearance from the baskets made by the adjacent Hupa and Weitchpec, or lower Klamath tribes. The only way you can be sure to possess any baskets coming from this family, would be through having some connections, who can secure specimens for you, in the vicinity. If you have any considerable number of Hupa and Weitchpec baskets secured through the trade, it is quite likely that some of them are Quoratean family, as all the basketry of Northwestern California, passes in the trade under the name of Hupa.
In regard to the two other families you mention, I hold out no hopes for you. The Esselen family has been extinct for fifty years or more, and there is no record of any of their work having been preserved, either in institutions or in private hands. There are perhaps, a half dozen or dozen individuals belonging to the Costanoan family still alive, but they are pretty thoroughly Mexicanized and live scattered and intermarried among the whites. The few I have run across, no longer preserve the art. I have heard of a few baskets attributed to this family, but in most cases at least, I believe that their reported origin was erroneous.
In the Mission period, many indians belonging to the Mariposan and Moquelumnan families, were brought to the Missions between San Francisco and Monterey, so they mixed with two native Costanoan indians, and being later importations, seem to have preserved their aboriginal arts somewhat longer. At any rate the few pieces of alleged Costanoan basketry which I have seen photographed, were all identical with the baskets now a-days made by the indians of the two other families mentioned. There is nothing to show that this ware is aboriginal, so that I have personally come to the conclusion that there is no basketry in existence which can positively be accepted as Costanoan.
Trusting this information meets your needs, I am
Very truly yoursSubject
Alfred L. Kroeber
University of California
Department of Anthropology
Quoratean
Baskets
Hoopa
Weitchpec
Klamath
Esselen
Costanoan
Mission
Mariposan
MoquelumnanSubject Person/Organization
Harry L. George Collection
